Spain, gearing up for the 2010 EU presidency, has yet again opened its doors to the embattled Karen National Union (KNU), according to Saw Hsar Gay, the ethnic group’s “Deputy Foreign Minister.”
Saw Hsar Gay’s meeting with Southeast Asian Affairs officials Dr Garcia Galan and Dr Adrian Martin Couce took place on Thursday, July 23.
This was Saw Hsar Gay’s seventh visit to the Spanish Ministry since 2001. In his previous trips he was accompanied by either David Tharckabaw, now Vice Chairman and Acting “Foreign Minister” of KNU, or Sai Wansai, General Secretary of the Shan Democratic Union in exile.
“We have the challenge of potential developments in Burma,” Galan, who has been to Thailandand is aware of the human rights situation, told Hsar Gay. “We are very concerned with human rights in Karen and other ethnic states and would like to be informed of significant changes so as to be able to act on the situation that is becoming acute and warrants stronger intervention.”
The one and-a-half hour discussion revolved around the 2010 general elections, the trial ofBurma’s democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese Army’s operations and abuses in KarenState, the Pyongyang-Naypyidaw axis and drugs, according to Hsar Gay.
“I told them that, from our point of view, nationwide ceasefire, release of all political prisoners, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, full fledged dialogue, rights of association of individuals and political organizations, free meetings and unrestricted travel, are among the basic conditions for any election to be acceptable,” he recounted.
The two sides agreed to meet again before the end of the year.
Saw Hsar Gay had already met the Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials in Lisbon on July 16 and had been invited to attend a diplomatic party on July 21, which he accepted.
The KNU suffered the loss of its 7th Brigade base in June, when it was attacked by a joint force of the Burmese Army and the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army.
“We are not engaging in a positional warfare but mobile warfare,” said Hsar Gay defending the military policy of the KNU. “Before this, the 7th's former base and the 10th special battalion base fell but they did not keep us from effectively employing guerrilla tactics that have inflicted devastating losses among the enemy.”
During 1 and 10 July, 70 pro-junta DKBA and KPF surrendered to the KNU bringing along 67 automatic rifles, one M79 grenade launcher, seven transceivers and five side arms, he said. “That proves our tactics are producing results,” he said.
The KNU, formed in 1947, has been fighting for autonomy and democracy, since 1949. Together with the Shan State Army (SSA) “South” and the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP), it is regarded as one of the strongest armed opposition movements fighting
Burma’s successive governments.
